


On Our Corner of the Street

by MiniInfinity



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, I suppose, M/M, Mild Blood, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 19:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity
Summary: When Wonwoo disappears from Mingyu again, he thinks a couple of days will pass before the universes throw him into the right one, just like all the other times he's disappeared before. But when the universe throws him into another for the first time in years, into a second and third in a row for the first time, he wonders if he'll ever find his way back.





	On Our Corner of the Street

**Author's Note:**

> this was, once again, written on a whim. minwon is my whimsiest ship to write for i suppose :D  
some **warnings:** there's blood and a death in here. also i didn't read through it after rewriting it sdlkfjd good luck to your eyes

Summer breeze flirts with Wonwoo's fringe, plasters strands over his forehead. He shifts at the bench in front of his apartment building, between glowing green grass and boiling sidewalk chalk, tumbles of children's laughter and the pang of his own heart awake and ready. He watches a girl ride her bike along the sidewalk, zip under the monkey bars and flit away with shrieks, giggles, "Do it again!" He watches the boy, her younger brother, he presumes, chase her down on foot, stumble through the change of terrain. It's a scrape of his shoe on pebbled, rubber mats and a quick save when his heels dig into dirt and flowers, crushed petals and fleeing bugs.

Wonwoo huffs, rakes his digits through his hair in a futile attempt to cool himself off. It became a routine for him in the summer, before his later shifts at the city's library, watching the neighborhood kids. It started two years ago when he sat at this same bench and for the first second, the boy trailed his sister, connected by a jump rope swinging between them. The next second, he picked up the boy in his arms when he wailed about his sister disappearing, jump rope caught in a vice grip at his hand. When he carried the boy back to his apartment, after explaining his sister disappeared, his mother thanked him for bringing her son back with a promise of a short while before her daughter, his sister, would come back.

And Wonwoo would be twisting his heart into a lie if he said it didn't break it each time. His foot taps without his second thoughts. This afternoon feeds off anxious toes and heavy heels, skittering fingertips across the thighs of his shorts, just waiting for the bike to hit the asphalt, for the boy's sister to run back to Wonwoo and cry that his sister disappeared again.

The first time it happened to someone he knew, his short fingers grabbed onto his father's jacket and nearly hung off the tearing fabric. He scathed his throat raw, claiming "Mommy was just on the couch" into the void of his father's ear. He begged his father to find his mother, to rip a map of the earth from his brother's book and mark off each city that left them more lonely than whole. That night, he pulled Bohyuk closer to his chest on their shared bed, held his hand to sleep, and wished he could wake up besides his mother, too.

But when he woke up to a familiar melody outside his room, he ignored the carpet burn at his knees when he tripped, didn't bother even checking on the hand he landed on, when he found his mother sewing the ripped knee of his old pair of shorts. He remembers choking her into a hug, a plea of her whereabouts and why, but she only blinked, sighed into the tops of his hair that she was happy to see him again.

The first time this happened to Wonwoo, Bohyuk ran up to him in a hug, a "We didn't know when we'd see you again" crushing the nerves and sensations in his legs just to hug him. He blanked out on blinking and wondered if that was the right universe.

The second time it happened, warm palms slipped across his cheeks, a hard press of lips on his, before his boyfriend sank his face into his neck, breathed in Wonwoo's pulse like his own. He blinked a blank out again, merely ghosted a finger at Mingyu's neck before slipping his arms around him and grounding himself back to the earth.

He snaps back from his thoughts when he hears the kids' mother calling them back inside to wash up, eat dinner. He follows right behind them to the elevator, helping the girl carry her bicycle without having it touch the floor. He pats a hand on the boy's head when he offers to carry it for Wonwoo, instead, and he supplies a small smile against what could have happened to them. He would hate to split these two apart again, to witness it himself.

On his way back down, he drops by his apartment to bid his father a goodbye, that he'll spend the rest of his day off from the library at Mingyu's temporary place at the other side of the city. He whispers a prayer to himself that he won't go away this time, that time and the universe stand by his side so he can spend both with Mingyu.

But in the fraction of a moment where he can stand in the elevator and jab a thoughtless thumb at his floor, something itches him not to do it in the first place. Not when his father will be alone the whole time. Not when it's been years since they last saw the other half of their family.

He can count years where he blew his birthday candles without his brother to push side with one hand. He can count those years with one hand, but he wishes he never needed his other hand to count the years since the last time his mother surprised him with the cake, surprised his father with a kiss on his cheek that juxtaposes the man who sits at the window.

He never liked being around his father much because no amount of words to convince him there's nothing they could do about it can alleviate the sobs in the middle of the night, prayers of finding them again, and wishes from his father to disappear himself so he can search for them.

There isn't much they can do about it, really, and Wonwoo hates that.

So he takes a step back from the doors of the elevator, sends his way down to the first floor. He starts his car, drives deep and away from the parking garage, and heads to the other side of the city.

Mingyu's walls still lie bare when he walks in for the thousandth time. He wonders if he'll ever put something up to make up for the vacant displays of bland white. If he decided to, would it be pictures? Drawings or paintings? Maps or the entire atlas?

Mingyu closes the door to his room, shadows carving into every corner parted curtains can breach into. He pulls him by the waist to dip a kiss against his lips, press him against those same bare walls. When he drifts back, his heart kicks at the small smack of their lips apart, and he traces the quiet breaths out Mingyu's lips, the fluttering eyelashes to trace all over his face, and the hush that they can see each other today.

"I'm really glad you're here," Mingyu whispers over the curve of his lips. The words ghost right over, and he whispers the same words back, threads his fingers through Mingyu's.

"I'm really glad you're here, too," Wonwoo smiles. Lines of his palms into Mingyu's, a teeter of his toes to lift another kiss to his lips.

They're five words they've been saying to each other since the first time Wonwoo disappeared, the first time either of them disappeared since they've known each other. Wonwoo disappeared more times than they can count, and Mingyu doesn't even have to conjure a few fingers just to count how many times he's disappeared. Because Mingyu is always the one finding him. In a way, he thinks Mingyu is lucky. The uncertainty of finding the right place at the right time never hit his family as many times as Wonwoo's, but he knows he shouldn't compare.

Mingyu brings his palms, cups his face in his hands, and everything says a warmth lingering, "Are you staying the night?"

"Do you want me to?" works against Mingyu's palms over his jaw.

A quick peck on his lips, an "I do," and a tug of his hand away from the wall, he stumbles through the fret of their giggles before they fall onto the bed.

\----

Wonwoo groans at the sunlight beating at his eyes the next morning. But sunlight shouldn't reach too far into Mingyu's room. The fact slaps him to sitting up on the bed, ignore the creak of his spine from the early hours.

Dirt pervades at his nose, digs into his hands when he sits up, and it hits him, then, that he's not sitting up on a bed, a mattress, or even a blanket. Trains line up before him, faded metals and rusty step-ladders to the conductor in each one. In between one train and the next, he picks out foliage, plants shooting up like they've raised the trains this whole time. Some carry the skeletons of locomotives, frameworks of what the future could have been if these weren't given up so soon.

The ceiling reeks of tattered glass, soiled wooden ribcages of the building. He wonders who long ago this place was thought to be part of something knew. He wonders why anyone would abandon such a place.

He loses himself in the idea of finding back home. But two days are all he needs to find home, to find Mingyu. Two days, not even a speck of the universe's existence offered to trace his ways back to Mingyu.

Budapest.

That's what a tourist told him. October 2018 brims right around the corner, and there's so much more to do in the city than "Visit that damn train station. There's nothing there."

He asks for the nearest airport, if it's too far from here.

Nighttime descends from his steps under lines of trees and branches, the orange weighing down the city, and the plane ticket tattooed on his hand. He lays the slip over his heart to keep him from wandering down those thoughts.

It's just a couple of days. He made it one day; he just needs one more.

He closes his eyes to sleep, but a whistle of the train shatters the idea up in the air. He wonders why the ground pulls him one way but when he looks up out the remains of the window, the engine whirs and he can't tell if this is supposed to happen, not with the bare slabs of metal almost combusting the entire structure.

Wonwoo wakes up with the hope of one more day. Just one more sunrise and sunset before he can find Mingyu again, like all the other days.

With the directions and mere help of the translator on his phone, he books a ticket to Seoul from the airport here. And when he heads to their corner of the street, where they always find each other all over again, it's just a quiet wait, subtle taps of toes on the sidewalk, until he maps himself to where he needs to be.

At least Seoul peaks into his system better than any other city. He can close his eyes and still find himself at their corner of the street, at the corner of the camera shop. He bumped into Mingyu for the first time at ths shop, not long after buying his first camera with his first paycheck. He pinched the bridge of his nose when the first half of his paycheck went straight for the ground and Mingyu nearly toppled over just to crouch down and pick it up, shoot back into standing to rush inside the camera shop to repay for that dent into his account.

Wonwoo still remembers that day, and he wishes he can relive in. He drops himself from the bus to the corner of the camera shop, on their corner of the street. He waits; he always waits for Mingyu here. A day or two is enough, and sometimes more, when it comes to finding him.

And when nighttime falls on this side of this universe, when he has yet to find Mingyu anywhere, he sighs, stuffs his fist into his pocket, and walks to what might be his home here. He may barter the universe for another day, just like he always did. Just one more day is all he asks for, and he'll find his ways back to Mingyu somehow.

But by the time the second day's sun sets, his heart wracks up, and he's not sure what to do. He tells himself that Mingyu will show up, like he always does in this corner, in two days, one day, less than a day. He always found his way back to him.

But when the city's clock strikes midnight, strikes him into a lost cause for this universe, he's still unsure if he should be moving on for finding a new spot.

\----

The air singes at his lungs, smoke and rubble dusting his features like makeup. Every sound pounds at his ears until all he hears is the singing inside and the shatter of a building not too far off. The world fends off dark at his vision, and it might be the fact he's hiding under leftover fragments of the school building or the blood and grenade shards all over the floors. The map at the desk behind him reveals the _Pohang _he recognizes from history books.

He glances up at rims of the black cap at his periphery and back down to his torso. The black uniform stained in red and black, ribbons of ammunition hanging off his shoulders like a lifeline. He glances down at his own hands, fingernails caked in dirt and something else, fingertips latching onto wood and metal.

Wonwoo picks up the rifle better with trembling fingers, watches the soldier right beside him choke at the clip releasing too soon and the magazine latching onto his thumb instead of bullets. The cries of surrounding soldiers, wishes for their mother and a way out of here would sting him, _should_ sting him. The universe here paints a fabrication of the life in here and the classroom he once shared with them not long before this. Just because they haven't crossed the stage for graduation shouldn't mean their lives are worth less, shouldn't mean they know the rules of war.

_This is wrong_, he tells himself when someone grabs the rifle and drags the boy and his thumb behind him. His face twists at the blood spurting around the magazine and clipped thumb. If his stomach didn't churn with bile, if he ate anything in the first place, everything would have came right back up.

He looks back down to the rifle at his fingertips, questions if in this universe, he pulled the trigger on anyone. But the thought takes control of his fingertips and the grip at his hand succumbs to the thought of shooting someone with his own hands--enemy or not.

His thoughts derange him into a hopeless road, to wonderings of whether his brother is in this same universe. If he can find Bohyuk here, out of anyone. His heart wrings to discover his brother holding onto a rifle similar to his, out of any circumstances the universes throw at him.

But he simply prays he won't find Bohyuk here.

The click of a rifle nearby stops him from delving any further. The ring at his ears return, and the shock of a rifle nudges the balance out of him. The world sways against him for a second and his feet barely missed the canteen knocked over and emptied, brimmed with dirt and a smear of blood. The crack of the trigger, blood splattered on the walls, he allows shoulders to shove him back and closer to the body on the floor.

Among the boys huddled around the lifeless boy on the ground, he makes out white strips taking over his face, the wash and size tag hanging by a stitch near his jaw, the old shirt ripped and wrapped around his skull futile to stop the bleeding. With the browning of aged blood, he thinks it's been a while. The shirt sticks from his chin to his nose, and he wonders what other damage this boy has gone through other than his own life.

When Wonwoo steps nearby, close enough to piece something out of the makeshift bandage on his face, his knees surrender. His knees crush beside the lifeless boy, and he tugs the shards of the shirt off. He pulls the bandage away, pushes the cap to the side.

A fallen piece of paper slips through, and he listens to the crinkle of years at the folds, dust shedding off and onto the boy's uniform. He unfolds to a picture of the boy, crushes the picture under his palm when he matches the mole on his nose, the canines poking out in the smile from another universe. He picks up the glint of his old specs against the sun and the scrunch of his nose in a smile that seems like it hasn't discovered much of the universes.

The grip on the uniform burns against the cries of Mingyu's name out his lips.

\----

Heat slathers all across his neck when he blinks hard, wipes the sweat at his forehead and the weight of the weather across his skin. Nighttime washes the city to dozes of blue, red, white lights. From the black of a scaling skeleton of steel and concrete, Wonwoo notices the bend of a crane, of a project built and collapsed with a loss of renewed hopes.

The name hangs off the tip of his tongue when he tries to count the layers and layers of glass panes, some shattered and some still in tact. The name of the skyscraper sinks into his palate when he realizes it shouldn't be this way. That the bend of the crane should be at the top of the building, not right beside him and sinking into depths of sand.

He concludes he's in the wrong universe. Burj Khalifa shouldn't be this empty. Burj Khalifa shouldn't be abandoned.

So he sits in the heat, doesn't even bother sheltering himself under the shadows of what shouldn't have been left alone in the first place. He closes his eyes, allows the sand to bathe him down under.

\----

The city brims into a whim at his ears with a dialect he's unsure of where he heard it from and pieces of a language he grew to know. Pohang still unsettles at his heart and when he closes his eyes, the picture prints something deeper into the memories and the universes.

He starts for a less-tread part of this town in his memories. He takes a few rounds about a couple of blocks to find the apartment building he would call his second home. So he takes a detour or two to Mingyu's apartment.

He knocks on the door and he speculates the usual patter of paws on hardwood and why he's not hearing it now. He still hates dogs, he can't deny that, but he understood Mingyu's love for Ahji and can't help but grow his own love for the little thing, too.

But the creak of the door, low grumbles off ancient lips, tell him he's in the right place at the wrong time. He asks about a Mingyu and watches the bewilderment all over the man's face when he says there's no Mingyu living here in this apartment right now or ever.

And their corner of the street still runs solid under the lamplight when he catches the train there. But yellow tapes and orange cones, the mutter of the police and blinding glints of badges tell him he might have to find another corner.

\----

The smoke of sand and sea salt tell him it's a city he doesn't have to ask someone for.

He wakes up with a creak at his neck against the sign of Montauk Point Lighthouse sign, nearly nicks the flower box of yellows if it isn't for the crackle of waves under him. Montauk is one of those pretty pages in Mingyu's books, one they both shared the shortest of daydreams with together to visit one day.

He steps into the closest gift shop, picks out the first calendar his eyes land on. The woman behind the counter smiles at him when he asks for the time, the year, and everything in between. And after asking for the directions to the nearest airport, he books himself a ticket back to Seoul. He may hate it this time, like all the other times, but perhaps, he and Mingyu can meet in this universe.

Without a hitch, he maps himself out to the corner of the camera store, to their corner of the street. He stands there, as he usually would, but something hits him this time. Maybe, for once, he'll stay here more than a day. Maybe he'll stay here in this corner for two. Sleep on the concrete and wake up to Mingyu tapping his shoulder awake.

He heads to the closest department store, purchases a sleeping bag and a marker, robs the recycling bin in the back for a clean cut of cardboard. He rips the shipping label and flips to the cleaner side, pops the cap of his marker open and sticks the picture of Mingyu at the corner.

When he returns to their corner of the street, he sets out his sleeping for the day. The cardboard leans against the wall of the shop, Mingyu's smiling face bright despite the drab brown around, the dark grays of his sleeping bag.

_If you see this man, can you tell him where I am?_

He sighs as he sits down, expects someone to kick the cardboard and preach to him that the entire universe is against him, that Wonwoo is wanting something the universe can't grant him. He expects for someone to sit down with him, just to talk him out of this plan and find Mingyu in another city, in another year, in another universe.

But this universe throws him into the year he met Mingyu, and he thinks that's something he can cling onto.

The surprise settles beside him in the form of a kid, sticking around in his elementary years.

"What are you doing here?" the boy asks. Something about the familiar pout of his lips and the pitch of his voice higher at the end reminds him of the little boy at his apartment building. He feels awful that he never learned his name.

"I'm waiting for someone," Wonwoo answers, barely gets every syllable out into the open.

"What it they never find you?"

The question punches the air out of his lungs and the beat out of his heart. He can't blame the kid for asking; maybe this is the first time he's ever seen such a thing.

"I'll keep waiting," Wonwoo's words of promise singe into the air.

"Good luck."

\----

The weather begins to stir into the junction of summer and autumn, with the winds picking up a cold on their ways to their corner of the street. The winds also don't forget about picking up the cold in passersby, their skepticism written in just the twist of their lips at his direction and the knit of their eyebrows when their eyes gloss over the sign next to his sleeping bag. But there are a few people gripping onto the same hope as he is, very few. The occasional drop of wishing him a good luck on his journey to find Mingyu and the more-than-occasional person recording his words to blow up into the news, the papers, the universes in a job well-done in driving him into this state.

"Oh, young man," an elderly woman pities him from the crown of her silvering hair to the worn rubber end of her cane. The tenderness of her voice reminds him so much of his mother, and he wonders that maybe in this universe, he would find her here. He wonders if he'll ever find her anywhere.

He offers to find somewhere else to sit, a bench just a few shops down the sidewalk or inside the camera shop, but the woman waves her hand in the air and merely asks him to help her sit on the ground.

"Why are you doing this?' spoken more from the wrinkles around her eyes.

His lips ghost out an answer, parting and closing, wanting to force a sound out just to have an answer and wanting to stay quiet because he can't have just one. His eyes trail down to any moving person around--the girl holding her mother's hand, the man grumbling about missing a meeting, the boy in high school uniform wiping at his eyes.

"I just want to see him again."

"I did the same thing," her voice lowers, as if she just spilled a secret of the universe. "I think Yakutsk was the hardest for me. I hate the cold." Wonwoo chuckles at her attempt to bring something light into the conversation. "I kept searching and searching for her."

He steers far from where her universes end, "Which cities have you been to?"

"Let's see." She looks far off into the city, into skyscrapers refracting the setting sun and the shadows looming down the streets. "Surat. That's in India. I loved the pond and wished I could take her there with me when I find her."

"When you _find_ her?" he reiterates at the tenses, tenses up at the clash of past and present. It strikes a weight athis eyes, a sting in his nose, and before he knows it, the woman drops her cane in favor of wrapping her arm around his shoulders. "Did you find her?"

"I'm still looking for her," she whispers against his ear, as if keeping this part of her away from the other universes. "It's my third time in Seoul already."

His breath loses itself in the chill of the early evening, bustles of footsteps all around him. How many lives has this woman been through just to find her again? How many cities has she visited and revisited, only to find herself with nothing to gain but another city and another year to check off from her list? Three times in Seoul with thousands of cities in a world reflecting off thousands of universes and more. He can't imagine the odds stacked in front of her, can't imagine how many more she might have to go through just to reach the end.

Something wretches the sob out of him, and he's not sure himself how long he's been shoving it down his throat.

His body melts into hers, and she sways him back and forth, rocks him as much as she can against the wrinkles of her hand and the decades of her bones. He lifts his head from her shoulder, threads the wish of finding her at her hands.

She thanks him, says she has to go now. She points towards the car parked at the sidewalk, confesses her granddaughter waiting for her.

After taking her gentle at his fingertips and into her car, he sits himself back down, scans around at the sleeping bag, the picture of Mingyu taped at the corner of the cardboard, and the calendar with a few days crossed off already. Maybe staying in one place isn't doing him any good, that the universe revels in the misery they throw at him. But running into different places hasn't helped him, either.

He just wishes Mingyu is here, somewhere in this universe.

But perhaps, he'll go somewhere else.

He crouches at his sleeping bag and rolls it up, stuffs it back into the case. He inhales the tears back from dripping onto his glasses. His ears wish to push out the whispering of gossip all around with his name, with the name he grew to hate.

"Isn't that the man who can't be moved?"

"Is he leaving?"

"He can't leave now. What if he finds the guy?"

At the mental shove of his shoulders back to the ground and waiting for Mingyu there, he rips out Mingyu's picture from the cardboard. He tucks the cardboard and calendar under his arm, salvages the picture at his fist. He saves the crumples of Mingyu's smile against his palm, the sigh out his lips as he straightens up with his belongings hanging off him.

He turns his back to the world, to the quiet stares of everyone around him. Hushed chatter behind their hands, catching the kids point at him and his cardboard from the corner of his eye, the gray of the city washing everyone sadder than they really are.

Are they more into finding Mingyu or are they in it for the story?

He sighs a second time, tilts his head down one more time to brace himself against the talk of the city and this universe. His head is a slow crane back up and when he opens his eyes, the universe hits him with a mirror of himself. A sleeping bag tucked under one arm, a piece of cardboard and a calendar snug under another, and a picture crumpled at the fist.

Except he makes out his glasses under the printed boarders, an old jacket of Bohyuk's he borrowed on his rush to meet Mingyu that one time, and his own smile over his favorite book. He picks out rough hands, the hard swallow down his throat, and the almost-disappearing mole at his nose.

He makes out Mingyu's name out his lips and his name out of Mingyu's own.

"I'm really glad you're here," Wonwoo whispers, frail between them, as if no one else can hear it, "on our corner of the street."

"I'm really glad you're here, too," barely breaks free from Mingyu's lips and the tears carving down to his lips.

He stuffs the picture of Mingyu in his pocket, drops everything at his feet to rush the side of his face against Mingyu's neck, wrap his arms around his waist, and tell him a thousand times over that he's really glad he's here.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i'm not sure if it made sense but i hope it kinda did. it was inspired by a long-time favorite song of mine, [the man who can't be moved by the script](https://open.spotify.com/track/4Musyaro0NM5Awx8b5c627?si=RE_1lR84Qx-dY3XUHwfuNA). it's the first song that made me sit down and think about the lyrics lmao  
  
anyway, as always, you can scream at me on [ tumblr](http://seokmins-thighs.tumblr.com/), [twitter,](https://twitter.com/_miniinfinity) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/miniinfinity)


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